^LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, #! 



FORCE CCLUl-EQTiQN, 






i UNITED STATES jOF AMERICA, f 



LETTER 



OF 



GEORGE W. HOPKINS, 



OF 



1E«L ^OU^^^JEEZSL^IEL^^ 



TO 



COL. JAMES H. PIPER, 



OF 



^^i^^^^^t MiiLva:«L._fflv:, 




/ 



WASHINGTON* 
1840. 



LETTER. 



City of Washington, March 16, 1840. 
Col. Jas. H. Piper : 

My Dear Sir — Your letter, which solicits the expression of 
my opinions about the great political parties that agitate the countiy, 
was lately received. 

Our private and political relations ; my respect for your charac- 
ter and honorable intentions ; and my aversion to conceal any opin- 
ions that my constituents may- desire to know, all induce me, with 
promptitude and frankness, to satisfy your desire, and to assign, as 
I shall now proceed to do, some of the prominent reasons which 
persuade me to support the present administration of the General 
Government. 

Since I had the honor to serve in the Congress of the United 
States I have honesdy endeavored to sustain those great public 
principles only, which the Constitution sanctions, and which Jeffer- 
son and his coadjutors in politics made practically prevalent among 
us. And while every day's experience confirms the wisdom and 
utility of those opinions, I am not aware that there is any public ac- 
tion of my life which indicates a departure from "them. 

If, on any of the memorable measures of public policy which 
vexed the public mind, I have differed from my political brethren, 
it was from a dutiful solicitude to preserve unimpaired that proud 
fabric of civil liberty which was reared and consecrated by the un- 
shaken constancy of our greatest and purest men. 

The Conservative party, in the United States, was avowedly 
formed for the maintenance of our constitutional principles. And 
in the hope and expectation to preserve, not to defeat these princi- 
ples, I became a member of it. But, since the prominent men who 
reared that party, and gave the greatest Ibrce and direction to it, 



have plunged into dangerous extremes, and now openly countenanfe 
ancj, support the public, men and public measures they lately opposed 
and reprobated, I feel constrained by my pride — by the love of con- 
sistency and public principle — to return to my old political associ- 
ates of the Democratic party, and to co-operate with them in the 
public cause. 

The Independent Treasury measure, for the collection, safe keep- 
ing, and disbursement of the public revenue, which Mr. Van Bu- 
ren recommended at the called session of Congress, in 1837, is the 
only prominent measure of the President that I have hitherto failed 
to support. I never did consider that measure as obnoxious to any 
constitutional objection whatever. But the thing wa§ new and un- 
tried ; without the experience and example of our ancestors, de- 
nounced by a large portion of my fellow-citizens, andsoconcertedly 
and violently opposed by the whole dynasty of associated wealth, 
and by the banks especially, that I was constrained to look upon it 
with distrust and fear. But candor compels me to acknowledge 
that the reasons for a Presidential recommendation of the measure 
are, in my judgment, more apparent and persuasive since the re- 
peated failure of the Banks to fuliil their fiscal engagements to the 
Government. 

In 1834, General Gordon, of Virginia, a Whig of rank, character, 
and abilities, introduced into the Congress of the United States this 
celebrated measure. And then the great body of General Gordon's, 
political coadjutors joined him in denouncing the State Banks as 
improper depositories of the public funds, and predicted that a reli- 
ance of the Government upon them would be disastrous to the na- 
tional credit. The friendly and liberal disposition which President 
Jackson and Mr. Van Buren both manifested towards the State 
Banks, met my cordial approbation at the time, and, owing to the 
circumstances of the country, I was disposed, under certain limita- 
tions and restrictions, to continue my support of the State Banks as 
fiscal agents of the Government, longer than many of my political 
friends would agree to do. I did not credit the prediction of tlie 
Whigs in relation to the Banks. And, even after the wisdom of the 
prediction had been confirmed by the memorable and disastrous ex- 
perience of every State in the Union, I was still loath to abandon 



' \ 



5 



tlie Banks ; lest in so doing, I might augment, ratlier than aHeviate, 
the general distresses of the country. My support of those institu- 
tions was real and honest — not factious nor political. But many of 
tJie politicians who had condemned those State institutions in ad- 
vance suddenly dispelled their fears, the very moment the Banks 
failed to pay their debts in speci*6 ; and then, for the first time, sup- 
ported the Banks as the proper depositories of the public funds ; or, 
rather, as convenient engines, subservient to their will, and necessary 
to hoist their patrons into power and place. Mr. Clay himself, if I 
mistake not, openly declared in the Senate that his support of them 
was rather ostensible tlian real, and given in the hope and expecta- 
tion that the continued and manifest incompetency of these State in- 
stitutions to fulfil their engagements to the public would produce the 
incorporation of a National Bank. 

The fourth section of the act of Congress of the 2d September 
1789, declares, " the Treasurer shall receive and keep the public 
moneys of the United States, and disburse the same on warrants 
drawn by the Secretary of the Treasury, countersigned by the pro- 
per officer, and recorded according to law." The only kind of 
money which this law allowed the Treasurer to receive and keep 
was money of the legal currency of the United States. The United 
States Bank was not then in existence, and no bank-notes of any 
kind were considered as legal currency of the United States. 
Neither the constitution, nor any law or resolution of Congress, had 
made them such. And yet, in one month after the passage of the 
act of 1789, to which I have referred, Alexander Hamilton, then 
Secretary of the Treasury, issued a Treasury order, authorizing 
bank-notes to be received into the Treasury, in payment of the pub- 
lic dues* This arbitrary order, issued, as I think, without authority 
of law, opened the way for a gradual admission into the Treasury, 
of a variety of moneys, all tending to confuse and to depreciate the 
legal currency of the United States. 

The currency ultimately became so bad, that on the 30th of April 
1816, Congress resolved that "no duties, debts, or sums of money 
payable to the United States, ought to be collected or received other- 
wise than in the legal currency of the United States, oi in Treasury 
Notes, or in the Notes of banks which pay their Notes in the. legal 
currency of the United States."' 



The cleposite act of the 23d of June 1836, aiuhorised the Secfd** 
lary of the Treasury to select, as depositories of public moneys* 
Banks convenient to the places where the revenue was payable and 
disbursable. The deposite Banks were accordingly selected; and 
Required "to credit as specie, all sums deposited therein, to the credit 
of the Treasured of the United States, and to pay all checks, war- 
Irants or drafts, drawn on such deposites, in specie, if required by 
the holder thereof." Such Bauks were to be discontinued as depo- 
sitories of the revenue of the Government, on failing to redeem their 
notes in specie. 

And it must be admitted that, in a state of profound peace with 
all the nations of the earth, the state Banks did, in May 1837, 
isimuitaneously and concertedly proclaim to the world that they 
could no longer discharge their debts or fulfil their engagements to 
the Government; and that President Van Buren, representing (as 
his high ofhce and his oath Required him to do) the credit, the dig- 
nity and Safety of the nation, Was forced to convene Congress, and 
disclose that important fact to the representatives of the people, and 
to femind them of the precarious condition of our monetary af- 
fairs, and the necessity of providing efficient means for the future 
preservation of them. 

In such a crisis of the national credit, ag was produced by the 
Suspension of the Banks in 1837, all must concede that the Presi- 
dent could only recommend to Congress a contimiation of the State 
Banks as fiscal agents of the General Government, or the establish- 
ment of a, National Bank, for that purpose, Or the adoption of legal 
provisions for the future collection, preservation and disbursement 
of the national funds, through the medium of a National Treasury, 
independent of the Banks* 

The President deemed it unwise and dangerous to re-adopt the 
Btate Bank iDepOsite System, directly after the notorious failure of 
the Banks to perform for the Government, obligations which were 
indispensible to the credit and security of the nation. I was dis- 
posed, under such regulations as past experience was calculated to 
suggest, to try them again, under the hope that their obligations 
ittight be made effective by severe penal provisions. Yet, I can- 
J'iOt now deny that great allowance is, in fairness, to be made for 



the refusal of the President to recommend them. His opponents, 
and tlie federal portion of them especially, had denounced the 
»State Banks before they were tried as fiscal agents of the Govern- 
ment. And the impartial judgment of the whole country is, that 
the Banks have been fairly and fully tried ; and that they have sig- 
nally failed more than once. All the politicians, therefore, who de- 
light to augur misgovernment in the democratic party, and who can 
never perceive any merit in the action of the President, would have 
seized the occasion to rouse the public indignation against him, had 
he again recommended institutions against which the opposition 
solemnly warned him ; and which had so lately violated their most 
important engagements to the nation. 

Honesty forbade the President from recommending to Congress, 
the establishment of a National Bank. Because, before his elec- 
tion to the presidential office, he had declared to the whole nation 
the solemn, deliberate conviction of his judgment, that a National 
Bank was not compatible with our fundamental laws, nor with the 
public policy and welfare. And on the wisdom of that declaration 
placed the issue of the Presidential election in 1836. Besides, the 
public voice, proclaimed at the polls, and echoed in the halls of leg- 
islation in an unambiguous and decisive manner, decreed the sleep of 
death to the National Bank, — that bloated, reckless, avaricious hari- 
dan which the genius of corruption had employed in the seduction 
of the national morals, till the virtue of the republic seemed to 
sicken into pestilence and desolation. 

Mr. Van Buren, therefore, refused to recommend either the State 
Banks or a National Bank; but as a substitute, recommended, as 
the safest depository of the public funds, a National Treasury, in- 
dependent of all Banks, whether National or State ; — and the off- 
ers of which should be created by the nation, compensated by the 
in,tion, responsible to the nation, and punishable by the nation for 
every abuse of trust and authority. 

The public attention has been freey invoked to examine this 
memorable measure ever since the President recommended it at 
the called session of September, 1837. Meanwliile, in October 
last, the State Banks, including the boastful regulator, the Unit- 
ed States Bank of Pennsylvania, once more suspended specie 



n 



payments, when we had no foreign war, nor domestic calamity to 
disconcert our foreign commerce or internal trade. 

We owe it to the bounty of Providence, and to the wisdom, 
moderation, and decision of the President, that the sore calamity 
of foreign war did not fall upon the nation at either period of the 
suspensions to which I have referred. The cloud of war, foreign 
and domestic — savage and civilized, still impend over the political 
horizon of our beloved country. And the wisdom of the wisest 
man cannot venture to prognosticate how long the blessings of na- 
tional peace will abide among us. If, in the hour of peace and 
prosperity, the nation has more than once, within a very short pe- 
riod of time, been unjustly deprived by the Banks of her indispen- 
sible resources, v/ar would afford those institutions additional pre- 
texts, if not adequate excuse, to lock up from the national defence 
all the specie of the government ; that specie which is the necessa- 
ry support of the nation, — our life blood in peace, and our sinews 
in war. In short, the Banks might, either from necessity, avarice 
or the love of power, dictate to the nation the terms of an igno- 
minious peace, and the surrender of our national honor and inde- 
pendence. 

I unhesitatingly avow therefore, that my opposition to the Inde- 
pendent Treasury measure has so far yielded to the convictions of 
reason and truth, that I am not only willing, but anxious, to give to 
the measure a fair and candid experiment. And I shall derive the 
highest satisfaction if the practical operation of the system shall 
illustrate the fallacy of my former opposition, and fulfil the expec- 
tations of its warmest friends. 

But I now repeat, what I have often declared before my generous 
and confiding constituents, that I cherish no hostile disposition to- 
wards the State Banks. For whilst I have ever been emphatically 
anti-bank in all my feelings and opinions, — have never owned one 
dollar of Bank stock, nor borrowed one dollar from any institution 
of that sort, I cannot but remember that the State Banks have been 
created, in the process of society, by what has been regarded as 
the necessities of mankind. And fostered, as they have been, by 
the taste, policy and institutions of the country, I consider them to 
he the useful handmaids of foreign commerce and internal trade. 



9 



^vlIich oiii^ht not, and cannot be rashly or suddenly abolii^iied, 
without shocking every interest in our common country. I would 
willingly encourage and support the Banks in their proper and le- 
gitimate vocations. I shall oppose them only when they madly 
wander from their appropriate spheres ; — when they claim as their 
riglit, the custody of the public purse ; — when, backed by the 
whole dynasty of associated wealth, they aspire to become politi- 
cians, and daringly contend for lead and authority in the Govern- 
ment; — when they fain would become the vital arteries through 
which the blood of the body politic must either circulate with 
wholesome vigor and life, or soon stagnate into pestilence and 
death. 

The recommendation to Congress of the independent Treasury 
system, and a divorce of the Government from Banks, roused 
against the Administration the simultaneous and concerted hostility 
of all the moneyed institutions which the President desired to see 
divested of a legal control over the National Treasure. Yet the 
President offered no wrong to any of those potent institutions. He 
found by fruitful experience that the political connexion which 
delegated that control to the Banks was injurious to the public in- 
terest — and wished by a timely and amicable separation to leave 
the Banks as they formerly were, in the complete exercise of all 
the corporate rights and privileges to which they were entitled 
under the provisions of their respective charters. The right and 
duty of the Government to dissolve the connexion fully and legally 
accrued on the admitted and notorious failure of the Banks to per- 
form for the Government the most important stipulated duties; 
duties which the banks utterly failed to perform, and on a true 
and proper performance of which alone, their connexion with the 
Government expressly depended. 

Still the banks solicit and expect the Government to renew and 
invigorate the hitherto disastrous connexion. And to effectuate 
their object have brought into operation all the fearful resources of 
combined wealth. Faihng to persuade the President into his offi- 
cial approbration of their wishes, they have continually labored 
through the agency of ambitious politicians and favored partizans 
to delude the pubhc mind, and to excite the most groundle;?? pre- 



10 



judice agsiinst the Chief Magistrate, by the unjust and disingenuciis 
accusation that he wickedly endeavors to deprive the Banks of 
their legal rights ; to destroy the whole credit system, and at once 
to disconcert the order of private business and national trade. 

The towns, that almost monopolize the immediate benefit of 
Banks, have every where been stimulated by the natural spirit of 
monopoly to countenance and propagate this idle and ungenerous 
charge ; and have liberally encouraged the public press to denounce 
the President for expressing the opinion that the national treasure 
should no longer be confided to the arbitrary pleasure, the precar- 
ious credit, and ambitious designs of the Banks. 

A vast number of the individuals indebted to the Banks are un* 
prepared to settle their accounts, and upon whom even a curtail 
would operate like a paralytic shock. A still greater number con- 
tinually court precuniary favors from the Banks. While the Banks 
themselves, always bent on an augmentation of their profits, naturally 
solicit the custody of the public purse, and force their debtors to aid 
the avaricious desire. 

To withhold the use of the national Treasure from the Banks, 
therefore, is to cross and frustrate the pecuniary necessities of a nu- 
merous, active, and powerful combination of bodies, natural and 
artificial. 

The Banking authorities, with such countless, necessitous aux- 
iliaries, combine against the Administration ; and by a bold, simul- 
taneous and persevering efibrt to control the revenue and finances 
of the United States, aspire to the exercise of powers that are for- 
midable in the extreme, and which threaten to overthrow the free- 
dom of the only hopeful Republic in the world. 

If this combined encroachment on the regular, constitutional pro- 
vince of the nation to collect and disburse its own revenue cannot 
be successfully resisted, the speedy consequence must be a total 
change in the structure and purposes of the Government. And 
those potent corporations, like the hundred Fathers of ancient Rome, 
may gradually organize themselves into the patrician orders of the 
regal age, dictate the national measures, and regulate all foreign 
•commerce and internal trade. And even should the structure of the 



It 



Government remain the same, the vital spirit of liberty, which ha^ 
animated and adorned our Republic, will become extinct and still. 

Incorporated wealth never cloys the appetite it feeds. Every 
morsel- of the stimulating aliment produces increase of hunger and 
thrist — until at last, the plethoric tendencies of the diet, swell the 
body politic into a puffed and reckless libertine. 

Mr. Rives himself declared in the Senate of the United States 
that to give the Banks the public deposites, without the privilege to 
'trade upon them, were a mockery and a humbug. And experience, 
I think, demonstrates that the privilege to trade upon them is liable 
to the most dangerous abuse. 

The sentiment against the mismanagement of the Banks, and the 
disorders in the currency \vhich that has a tendency to produce, 
have become so universal and notorious that no one can now be 
found hardy enough to bring forward a proposition in Congress to 
allow the Banks to trade on the name, credit and revenues of the 
United States. 

Yet, in taking leave of the Conservative party, I cast no impu- 
tations upon it. The omnipotent Being, who alone is faultless and 
pure, and who has nothing to pardon in himself, may reward each 
one among us by a severe scrupulous standard of his own. But a 
fallible mortal like myself, whose very best actions must be charita- 
bly considered, if they would hope to pass the ordeal of God, 
cannot be too mild, tolerant and forgiving. 

It has been definitively settled in a full and free convention of 
the Whigs, and proclaimed to the world, that General William H. 
Harrison, of the State of Ohio, is the only candidate they will 
support in the approaching presidential contest. This is the very 
same military chieftain whom the Whigs selected in 1836, and ac- 
coutred with the dazzling helmet and nodding plume to decoy the 
multitude from Mr. Van Buren and the democratic cause. 

When the democratic party supported General Jackson, and 
raised him to the Presidential office, the opposition orators prognos- 
ticated to the multitude the certain destruction to our hberty and 
laws. And every effort of the tongue and pen was unscrupulously 
made to impress that terrific belief on the public mind. Mr. Clay, 
who was then the great leader and champion of the National Re- 



12 



publicans, since styled Whigs, in a public speech conjured the peo- 
ple against the parricidal act; and preferred "war, pestilence and 
famine," to a ijiilitary chieftain at the head of the government. 
And in a published letter which, in January 1825, he wrote to 
the Honorable Francis T. Brooke, of Virginia, he gave a solemn 
pledge that as "a friend of liberty and the permanence of our insti- 
tutions, he could not consent, at that early stage of their existence, 
by contributing to the election of a military chieftain, to give the 
strongest guarantee that this republic ivill march in the fatal 
road which has conducted every other republic to ruin.^^ 

The presses and orators throughout the land every where at- 
tested the general prevalence of this atfected solicitude among the 
Whigs to secure our liberties against the latal example of a military 
chieftain at the head of the government. Yet no sooner had Gen. 
Jackson retired from the public stage, than the very politicians who 
had boldly denounced all military chieftains as incompetent to civil 
rule, and dangerous to the national repose, brought forward and 
supported General Harrison for the presidential office. And sure- 
ly, no two rivals for the public approbation were ever better quali- 
fied than General Haarison and Mr. Van Buren were, to represent 
the great political parties to which they respectively belonged. 

I mistake the character of General Harrison, if he be not a 
genuine scholar of the old federal school ; that school where Hamil- 
ton, and Pickering, and Marshall, and Ames graduated in the polit- 
ical science of the day. In former times. General Harrison was a 
member of Congress, and approved the objectionable measures that 
dismissed the federal party from the public confidence. 

In the Senate of the United States, John' Randolph, of Roanoke, 
thus addressed himself to General Harrison, then a member of the 
same body: "The only difference between the gentleman from 
Ohio, (General Harrison,) and myself is this — and it is vital: that 
gentleman and myself differ fundamentally and totally, and did dif- 
fer when we first took our seats in Congress — he, a delegate from 
the territory North West of the river Ohio ; I, as a member of the 
other House from the State of Virginia. He ivas an open, zealous, 
frank supporter of the black cockade sedition laiv administra- 
tion. We differed fundamentally and totally — we never agreed 



13 



about measures or men. I do not mean to dictcite to the gentleman 
— let us agree to difler as gentlemen ought to do, especially natives 
of the same State, who are antipodes to each other in politics. 
He, I acknowledge, just now the zenith, and I the nadin ; but un- 
less there is something false in the philosophy of the schools, in 
the course of time even those will change their places." 

To this address, the General replied: "He (Mr. Randolph,) has 
been pleased to say that under the administration of Mr. Adams, I 
was a federalist ; and he comes to that conclusion from the course 
pursued by me in the session of 1799 — 1800, The gentleman had 
no means of knowing my political principles, unless he obtained 
them in private conversation. As I was on terms of intimacy 
with the gentleman, it is very probable that he might have heard 
me express sentiments favorable to the then administration. I 
certainly felt themy 

Here then, is the direct testimony of a gentleman who lived on 
terms of intimacy with General Harrison — who served with him 
in both Houses of Congress ; and the explicit, unequivocal admis- 
sion of the General himself, that the General's political sentiments 
were favorable to the federal administration of the elder Adams. 

And in a studied and elaborate speech, which he delivered at 
Cheviot, in the State of Ohio, on the 4th of July, 1833, and which 
was written, published, pamphletized and widely circulated. Gene- 
ral Harrison re-asserted and promulgated the alarming canons of 
his political church. He advocated the power of Congress to in- 
corporate a National Bank; the control of the Federal Judiciary 
over the other departments of the General Government; the pow- 
er of the General Government to protect domestic manufactures by 
the imposition of duties on the importation of foreign goods ; 
warmly approved the federal doctrines of Mr. Webster, delivered 
in the Senate in 1833, in defence of General Jackson's proclama- 
tion against South Carolina; and placed that warlike manifesto 
against State Rights above Jackson's glory when England's arro- 
gance was cloven down upon the plains of Orleans. And to round 
into grace and beauty a perfect federal creed, General Harrison ex- 
pressed an earnest solicitude that the States should authorize Con- 



14 



i^ress to appropriate tlie whole surplus revenue ol' tlie IJiiioii to the 
purchase and emancipation of every slave in North America. 

Such were the political opinions of General Harrison in 1833: — 
opinions freely and gratuitously proclaimed ; recorded in the histo- 
ry of the times, and thoroughly considered by the people, long be- 
fore the- presidential contest which terminated in the election of 
Mr. Van Buren. And in that animated contention the same prin- 
ciples and designs were developed by the respective parties that 
have marked the political annals of this country from the founda- 
tion of the government to the present hour. 

Never has history recorded a departure of practice from profes- 
sions that is more wide, memorable and direct, than that which the 
Whigs maiiiifested in their support of General Harrison for the 
presidential office. That discordant party smothered their person- 
al and public griefs in a mutual rivalry for power and place. And 
ambitious aspirants who, in their notions about the public weal, 
had stood as wide asunder as the poles of the earth ; who never did 
battle in a common cause ; nor marched to the same tune ; nor 
stacked arms on the same ground ; then boldly covenanted to power, 
as they vainly did, their accumulated vengeance on the chosen 
champion of the democratic cause. All the restless pageants of 
departed sway mustered together in one common camp, under the 
venerable and imposing title of AVliigs. Under the auspices of 
that deceptions name they constantly complained that exorbitant 
and unconstitutional powers were claimed and exercised by the 
administration party ; deprecated the popular partiality for military 
service ; and seemed to consider that all the perils that encompassed 
the public freedom and felicity were condensed and concentrated 
in the danger to State rights, from a military chieftain at the head 
of the government! Thus, with a perfect knowledge of the fede- 
ral heresies of General Harrison, and that he too had followed the 
war, the Whigs deliberately voted to raise that military chieftain 
over all the worth and wisdom of the State Rights men. 

Mr. Clay, in the teeth of his own opinions, deliberately and re- 
peatedly proclaimed to his fellow men, has been lately stimulated 
by an inordinate party zeal, or by the hope, the expectation and 
promise of the succession to the Presidency, to quit his proper po~ 



15 



sition in the national Senate — play the ambulant orator of his poli- 
litical priesthood — rise at the festive board, at midnight dances, and 
the public shows, and recommend this old military Chieftain — this 
superannuated idol of Whiggery — as the President of the United 
States. But the spirit of liberty which vanquished our oppressors 
in 1776 — which produced the civil revolution in 1800, when the 
federal sway of the elder Adams expired forever — which roused the 
people to vindicate their rightful supremacy by the decisive rebuke 
they gave General Harrison in 1836 — will continue to shine out 
with renovated ardor ; and, heedless of the fogs which the Whigs 
throw up, animate to victory the unwavering champion of the De- 
mocratic cause. 

Whilst I shall hereafter oppose, as hitherto I have done, such 
measures of Mr. Van Buren's administration as my judgment may 
condemn, I cannot withhold from him, or from you, the acknow- 
ledgment that I have found enough, in the just appreciation of his 
motives and measures, to forbid me to forsake him for one of Gene- 
ral Harrison's pretensions and opinions. And in pursuing the dic- 
tates of my own judgment in this respect, I shall but meet the ex- 
pectations of a large majority of my constituents ; for, in private con- 
versations and public addresses, prior to my departure for this city 
in November last, I constantly declared, that whilst it was my de- 
termination to oppose such measures of the Administration as I 
thought pernicious to the public interest, I should continue to sup- 
port such as I might approve; and that between Mr. Van Buren and 
Mr. Clay, or any other member of the Federal party, I should not 
hesitate to prefer the former. This was my position, then fully and 
unequivocally defined, as many of my constituents can testify. 

I profess no extraordinary solicitude for the public weal. And 
will not attempt hypocritically, to persuade my countrymen into a 
disreputable fear of a Chieftain, even of the true martial order, much 
less of a Chieftain who, if not always of the opposite sort, is now 
old and feeble ; the superannuated and reluctant idol of a discordant 
party, and almost a driveller and a show. 

I readily acquit General Harrison of the potentiality of harm, 
when I remember what history records, that in his sinewy days,, 
some seven and thirty years ago, when national gratitude awarded 



16 



llie meed of voluntary praise to every gallant man, he displayed no 
heroic {renins in the tented field, nor any disposition to continue 
there ; but, on the contrary, hobbled in the paths of martial glory, 
and voluntarily retired from the troubles and dangers of war, at the 
moment when his country was engaged in the thickest of a perilous 
and doubtful fight for national honor and independence. General 
Harrison, without a pretence of sickness, or inability from any 
cause that I am aware of, resigned his commission as Major Gene- 
ral in the Army of the United States. And we have the fullest au- 
thority to justify the assertion, that the Government never prevented 
General Harrison from serving in the Army from which he volunta- 
rily retired ; but that on the contrary, the Government assigned him 
a service, which, had he performed it, would have placed a wreath 
of laurel on his brow. 

So late as February last, General Armstrong — now retired from 
the bustle of the world — with no motive to disparage a fellow man, 
and actuated solely by a disposition to historic truth, stated in his 
letter to the editors of the National Intelligencer — a letter founded 
on documentary evidence and published correspondence — 

1st. That General Harrison, when arriving at Erie, was not from 
enmity, or envy, ordered to repair to Ohio, or othenvise prevented 
from giving his services to the Jlrmy then on the Niagara, as as- 
serted by his biographer. 

2dly. That on the contrary, he was without delay put in com- 
mand of the Army, and assigned to a service, which, had it been 
performed, would have justly entitled him to another wreath of lau- 
rel. 

3dly. That by a second order from the Secretary of War, he 
brought down McArthur's brigade, to reinforce the garrison at 
Sackett's Harbor; an order entiiely approved and specially execu- 
ted by the General. 

4thly. That on the 11th May, 1813, six months after leaving 
Sackett's Harbor, he resigned the command of the district, and quit- 
ted the Army ; not, as his biographer asserts, because denied the 
privilege of serving tlie Government, and therefore ashamed to eat 
its liread; but, as lie himself says, "because he had some reason to 



17 



believe that malicious insinuations to his disadvantage hail beeu 
made at Washington." 

Long after this peaceful General had allowed his valor to cool, 
and his patriotism to flag, the true martial spirits of liberty bore up 
the national renown. And the gallant men, so cruelly deserted by 
the sunshine warrior of North Bend, dispelled their patriotic griefs, 
under the victorious banners of General Jackson, that warlike and 
patriotic man who faced with dauntless breast the tyrants of his 
country, and raised a name to live " so long as the Mississippi shall 
continue to pay her tribute to the flood." 

In the Democratic Convention which assembled at Nashville, on 
the 11th of February last, General Carroll, that gallant and accom- 
plished officer who was second in command at the battle of New 
Orleans, and who was familiar with the events of the war, reviewed, 
in a public speech, the military life and pretensions of General Har- 
rison, and declared "that while wearing the epaulettes of a General in 
seasons of actual service. General Harrison was time after time guil- 
ty of conduct in his ofliicial capacity that ought to disgrace a subal- 



tern." 



General Carroll commenced with the Battle of Tippecanoe, and 
proved, by Harrison's own oflicial letters to the War Department, 
that he encamped on ground selected for him by his enemy, and 
which Harrison acknowledged was unsuitable, and around which he 
neglected to throw up even a temporary retrenchment to protect his 
men from the savage foe. That he had no picket guard, and no 
common camp ; and was literally surprised and circumvented by the 
enemy, and cut oflTfrom the possibility of retreat. 

That General Harrison commanded the forces that fought the 
Battle of the Thames, is true. But no history records his achieve- 
ments there. He sent his distinguished subaltern, Colonel Johnson, 
to fight the battle for him. The scars of that gallant ofl^cer bear tes- 
timony to the fidelity and bravery with which he obeyed the order 
of his commandinor jreneraL 

When the public enemy appeared in the vicinity of Sandusky, 
General Harrison ordered the lion-hearted Croghan to blow up Fort 
Stephenson, and retire. The Colonel, at the hazard of his own 
fame, disobeved the order, repelled the enemy by one of the most 

3 



18 



gallant struggles to be found in the history of American armies, cov- 
ered the General with shame, and received the applauses of the 
whole country. 

In 1816 a resolution was submitted to the Senate of the United 
States, to vote a medal and thanks to Governor Shelby and General 
Harrison, for their services in the war. On motion, the name of 
General William Henry Harrison was stricken from the resolution 
by the Senate. It is true, the Senate, that the name of General 
Harrison might be retained, did afterwards, by a majority of one 
vote, recommit the resolution to the committee which brought it for- 
ward. But the yeas and nays, and proceedings of the day fully 
show, that there were members enough absent from their seats, 
when the resolution was recommitted, and who voted to strike out 
the name of General Harrison, to have defeated this reluctant com- 
pliment to the General. But even if it were not so, the resolution 
thus recommitted was permitted to expire in the committee room, 
and was never revived during that session of Congress. It is im- 
possible to conclude, therefore, that any thing short of a conviction 
that General Harrison's reputation, as a military commander, could 
not receive the applause of that enlightened Senate, dispirited his 
friends, and prevented them from pursuing the application for a 
medal and thanks. 

The Journal shows that General Armistead T. Mason, a generous 
spirit, the pride and bantling of his own native Virginia — who bore 
a name that envy cannot but call fair — who lived and died a gallant 
man, voted against all national honors to General Harrison. Gene- 
ral Andrew Jackson, too, who succeeded Harrison in the command 
of the army, and who still lives as the examplar of soldierly honor 
and patriotic deeds, and who retains an intimate knowledge of every 
character who figured on the theatre of war, never approved this 
medalic glorification of General Harrison. 

In a letter which General Harrison wrote on the 16th July, 1816, 
he pathetically laments the remediless mischief to his name which 
a failure to obtain the medal had produced. In that letter, he says, 
*' A vote of the Senate of the United States has attached to my name 
a disgrace which, I am convinced no time or efforts of mine will 
ever be able to efface. This censure is, indeed, negative, but is not, 



19 



on that account, the less severe." Yet, in 1818 General Harrison's 
patrons, appealing to the public sympathy, coaxed from the credu- 
lous generosity of the Senate that faint, reluctant, dubious lionor, 
then become necessary to save the General from disgrace and ruin. 
The Journal of the Senate gives the following account of the Gene- 
ral's persevering efforts to obtain the medal : 

*' In Senate of the U. S., 

Saturday, ^pril 13, ISl 6. 

Agreeably to the order of the day, the Senate resumed, as in 
Committee of the Whole, the consideration of the joint resolution, 
directing medals to be struck, and, together with the thanks of Con- 
gress, presented to Major General Harrison and Governor Shelby, 
and for other purposes. 

Mr. Van Buren was requested to take the Chair. 
On motion by Mr. Lacock, 

To amend the resolution by striking out therefrom, " Major Gene- 
ral Harrison," 

It was determined in the affirmative — yeas 13, nays 11. 
On motion, 

The yeas and nays being desired by one-fifth of the members 
present, those who voted in the affirmative are, 

Messrs. Dana, Gaillard, Gore, Hunter, King, Lacock, Mason, 
of N. H., Roberts, Tait, Thompson, Tickcnor, Turner, Varnum. 

Those who voted in the negative are, 
^ Messrs. Barbour, Barry, Condit, Horsey, Macon, Morrow, Rug- 
gles, Talbot, Wells, Williams, Wilson. 

The resolution having been amended, 
On motion by Mr. Roberts, 

Ordered, That the further consideration thereof be postponed 
until Monday next. 

Saturday, April 'Zdth, 1816. 

The Senate resumed, as in Committee of the AVhole, the consi- 
deration of the resolution directing medals to be struck, and, together 
with the thanks of Congress, presented to Major General Harrison 
and Governor Shelby, and for other purposes. 



Mr. Varnuin was requested to take the Chair; and, the resolution 
having been amended, the President resumed the Chair, and Mr, 
Varnum reported accordingly. 

On the question to concur in the amendment, agreed to as in Com- 
mittee of the Whole, to strike out " Major General William Henry 
Han'ison," 

It was determined in the negative — yeas 13, nays 14. 

On motion by Mr. Varnum, the yeas and nays being desired 
by one-fifth of the Senators present, those who voted in the affirma- 
tive are, 

Messrs. Campbell, Daggett, Gaillard, Gore, King, Lacock, Ma- 
son, of N. H., Mason, of Va., Roberts, Tait, Tickenor, Turner> 
Varnum. 

Those who voted in the negative are, 

Messrs. Barbour, Barry, Chase, Condit, Harper, Horsey, Ma- 
con, Morrow, Ruggles, Sanford, Talbot, Wells, Williams, Wilson. 
On motion of Mr. Horsey, 

Ordered^ That the resolution be recommitted to the Committee 
on Military Affairs, further to consider and report thereon. 

In Senate, March 24th, 1818. 

Agreeably to notice given, Mr. Dickerson asked and obtained 
leave to bring in a, resolution directing medals to be stiiick, and, to- 
gether with the thanks of Congress, presented to Major General 
Harrison and Governor Shelby, and for other purposes ; and the 
resolution was read. 

Ordered, That it pass to a second reading. 

In Senate of the U. S., 

' Friday, March 27, 1818. 

The Senate resumed, as in Committee of the Whole, the consi- 
deration of the resolution directing medals to be struck, and, to- 
gether with the thanks of Congress, presented to Major General 
Harrison and Governor Shelby, and for other purposes ; and the 
resolution having been amended, the President reported it to the- 
House accordingly ; and the amendment being concurred in on the 
question, " Shall this resolution be engrossed, and read a third time V* 

It was determined in the ailfirmative. 



1 



Monday, March 18, 1818, 

The resolution direciiiig medals to l^e struck, and, together with 
the thanks of Congress, presented to Major General Harrison and 
Governor Shelby, and for other purposes, having been reported by 
the committee, correctly engrossed, was read a third time. 

Resolved, That the resolution pass." 

No sooner had General Harrison coaxed the Senate to save 
him from disgrace and ruin, than he joined tlie Federalists in the 
House of Representatives in their violent and gratuitous censure ol' 
General Jackson's military conduct in the Seminole war, and voted 
for the resolution disapproving the proceedings on the trial and 
execution of Alexander Arbuthnot and Robert C. Ambristei ; and 
•declaring the seizure of the Spanish Ports of Pensacola and St. 
Carlos de Barancos, by the American Army, to be contrary to the 
constitution of the United States. 

The feelings which should always actuate a gallant man, who 
had himself suffered under a supposed neglect of his military rep- 
utation, are widely different from those which governed General 
Harrison towards his successor in arms. The '*haud ignarus mali, 
miseris succurrere disco," was forgot in tlie unworthy recollection 
of the "odium in longum jacens." 

But Congress and the nation, and the British authorities re- 
membered and approved the conduct of General Jackson, and 
sheltered the fame of that gallant and patriotic man from the bod- 
ings of that pitiless storm which folly and injustice, hatred and 
malignity had raised around him. 

I will not dwell upon the rebuke so justly bestowed upon Gen. 
Harrison when, in open war, and under the expectation of a battle 
^t Tippecanoe, he encamped upon a ground which the public enemy 
advised him to take ; and which enabled the savage foe, at break of 
morn, on the very next day, to .surprise and slaughter our gallant 
men ; because it is unnecessary further to examine and expose 
the unfounded and idle pretensions of General Harrison to martial 
renown. Partial biographers may manufacture materials for parti- 
zan orators and mercenary scribblers to blazon his military career. 
The living and recorded evidence refutes them all. 

But if hi? warlike qualities rah furnish th»» vTencral it* rslionaJ 



22 



passport to the Presidential office, what are the civil pretensions 
that should carry him there? 

His warmest supporters dare not assert for sp impotent a charac- 
ter any superiority of wisdom and abilities ; any tolerable qualifica- 
tions for such an important public trust. He has long passed that 
golden period of human life which is least effected with the follies 
of youth, and the infirmities of age. His mental horizon — never 
spacious or clear — is now contracted to a melancholy span. And 
for that poor remnant of mortality yet to come, he can only hope 
to serve as a passive instrument with which the master spirits who 
flatter and cajole him calculate to consummate and to empass all 
the wild mischievious designs of the old federal party. 

The hydra of the federal dynasty, which has hitherto cow^ered 
before the indignant frowns of the multitude, rises now with keener 
vengeance in his fang, and aims to strike contagious poison into 
the vitals of the constitution. To cover this appalling purpose 
from the public view. General Harrison has been coaxed into the 
expression of the most inconsistent and irreconcileable opinions. 

In a letter which he wrote to the editor of the Cincinnati Inquisi- 
tor, and which was published there in September 1822, he makes 
professions of republican principles which are directly repugnant to 
the acts, declarations and sentiments of the General on other occa- 
sions, both before and since the letter was written. In that letter 
he says, *'I am myself a republican of what is called the old Jeffer- 
sonian school." 

In his reply to Mr. Randolph he admitted that he was the friend 
of old John Adams, and other supporters of his administration. 
In the letter he says, '^'I believe in the correctness of that interpre- 
tation of the constitution which have been given by the writings 
of that enlightened statesman, Mr. Jefferson, who was at the head 
of the party, and others belonging to it, particularly the celebrated 
resolutions of the Virginia Legislature during the presidency of 
Mr. Adams." 

In his Cheviot speech, to which I have referred, and in which 
he cordially supports the principles of the Proclamation and Force 
Bill, he says, ^'constituted as is the government of the Union, it 






appears to me that there is not the least danger of encroaching on 
the rights of the States; that ''the right of State interposition 
strikes at the very foundation of the legislative poioers of Con- 
gress; and that ''it is undeniably true, that the framers of the con- 
stitution intended to create a national judicial poiver, ivhich 
should he paramount on national subjects^ 

These sentiments are directly against the celebrated resolutions 
for which the General professed a regard. 

In 1818 General Harrison, then a member of the House of 
Representatives, voted for resolutions claiming in various forms the 
power for Congress to make roads and canals within the limits of 
the respective States ; and especially for the resolution declaring 
that "Congress has power under the constitution to appropriate 
money for the construction of post roads, military and other roads, 
and of canals, and for the improvement of water courses." 

In 1826, as a vSenator from Ohio, he voted for a survey between 
the Apalachicola and Mississippi rivers, with a view to establish an 
inland navigation. This appropriation was opposed by Messrs. 
Macon, Randolph, Berrien, Hayne, Branch, Van Buren and White. 

In March and April, 1826, he repeatedly voted for similar appro- 
priations ; and I believe the assertion may be safely made, that no 
proposition for internal improvement was ever presented to either 
house of Congress, whilst General Harrison was a representative, 
which did not receive his cordial approbation and support. 

In 1827, while in the Senate of the United States, he voted 
against the reduction of the duty on coffee, from five to three per 
cent, and against the reduction of the duties on teas. And such was 
his persevering determination to fasten on the country the policy of 
a high tariff, for the encouragement of domestic manufactures, that 
in an address delivered before the agricultural society of Hamilton 
county, in 1831, he said: 

" It may be asked, whether under any circumstances I would be 
willing to abandon the Tarifl'. I answer without hesitation in the 
affirmative. Wlienever the streets of Norfolk and Charleston shall 
be covered with grass, and our Southern friends find no market 
for their produce — and this state of things can be directly traced 



24 



to the Tariff— \ would then instantly give my voice for its raodifi-' 
nation or entire repeal." 

Here, then, is a venerable gentleman in decay, stimulated by the 
hope of advancement to the Presidency, continually manifesting the 
grossest departure of practice from profession — of admiration, first 
for Mr. Adams and then for Mr. Jefferson — of a preference for the 
immortal resolutions of the Virginia Assembly, and a pei severing 
disposition to destroy every salutary principle which these resolu- 
tions were plainly intended to assert and to preserve. 

The opinions of General Harrison on the domestic relations of 
master and slave, and the powers of the General Government in rela- 
tion to that important subject are, in my opinion, equally confused, 
inconsistent and unsatisfactory. 

The various propositions made by General Harrison, both in 
Congress and in the Senate of Ohio, in the year 1819 and 1820, 
comprise and illustrate his opinions on the subject of slavery, in the 
most solemn and authentic form. At each of those periods the 
State of Missouri was part of the territories of the United States, 
asking admission into the Union. The question of Federal power 
over the subject was, in the judgment of the General, settled by an 
amendment which he offered in Congress, on the 19th February 
1819, after that question had been fully discussed on principle alone. 
That amendment was offered to the amendment proposed by Mr. 
Taylor of New York, to the Missouri Bill, then before the House of 
Representatives, and reads — " All that part of the present Territory 
of Missouri, lying north of a line to be run due west from the mouth 
of the river De Moines, to the territorial boundary of the United 
States, shall form a part of the Territory of Michigan ; and the laws 
in force in the said Territory, as well as the ordinances of Congress, 
prohibiting slavery or involuntary servitude in the said Territory of 
Michigan, shall be in force in that part of the Missouri, lying north 
of said east and west line." 

This amendment conceded the whole question of constitutional 
power. Mr. Philip P. Barbour opposed this amendment of Gene- 
ral Harrison, and argued against all amendments of a similar char- 
acter, as partial, inexpedient, and unconstitutional ; that if the prin- 
ciple was wrong in itself, it ought not to be withheld from one part 



25 



of the Territory and applied to another ; and that if the rule waa 
wrong at the thirty -fifth degree of latitude, it was equally so at the 
fortieth. 

General Harrison's preamble and resolutions, oflered in the Se- 
nate of Ohio on the 3d January,' 1820, show the extent to which 
he would have used the power of the Government, through his Se- 
nators and Representatives in Congress, to repress, as he styled it, 
** a great moral and political evil, which sullied our national char- 
acter, and materially affected our national happiness.'* He assert- 
ed " that the admission of slavery in the new State of Missouri, was 
fraught with the most fearful consequences to the permanency and 
durability of our Republican institutions," and invoked " the ut- 
most exertions and the use of every means to avert it." 

The wild and furious tornado which this question engendered 
pervaded the Union, and shook the empire State where, in obedi- 
ence to the public will, the most eminent men were forced to give it 
smoothness, rather than open opposition. 

Still the debates in the New York Assembly will show that the 
Administration party then endeavored to avoid that portentious storm 
which, for political effect, was fed and invigorated by the Federal 
party. During that protracted excitement Mr. Van Buren, then in 
the Senate of his native State, gave a silent vote for the Missouri 
resolution, which passed that body on the 29th of January 1820. 
In doing this, I cannot doubt that he was governed by the settled 
and general will of the people whose representative he was. If any 
evidence exists that he supported the measure with activity, it has 
never been produced to the public in any shape. 

His support of the election of Rufus King to the Senate has been 
often referred to, and relied on by his enemies to prove that Mr. 
Van Buren was a Missouri restrictionist of the most decided and 
dangerous character. 

But his support of Mr. King had no connexion with the question 
of slavery. It was given from necessity, approved by the Adminis- 
tration party, whose leading organ in Washington advised it, and 
was intended to defeat the election of J. D. Spencer, who had been 
the Speaker of the Assembly, and was the candidate of the Clirto- 
nian party . 



26 



Let the New York resolution of the 29th January 1820, i'or 
which Mr. Van Buren silently voted, be compared with the one 
which, on the 3d day of the same month and year. General Harri- 
son penned and offered to the Senate of Ohio, and supported with 
all his energies ; let the conduct of these two public characters, in 
relation to slavery, be weighed in impartial scales, and the award of 
truth and justice be fairly made. , 

The Abolitionists and their coadjutors oppose the President, be- 
cause they can neither seduce nor drive him into their wild, unhal- 
lowed schemes against the peace of the Union. He has declared it 
to be his clear and settled opinion, that it is the sacred duty of those 
who are intrusted with the action of the General Government to use 
their constitutional powers to prevent any interference by Congress 
with the exciting relations of master and slave. No language can 
be more explicit than his. He stands pledged as the inflexible, 
uncompromising opponent of any attempt on the part of Congress 
to abolish slavery. He denies that Congress has the shadow of 
such a power over the States ; and so solemn is his conviction of du- 
ty, so deep his sense of the injustice that would be done to the slave- 
holding States, so fully satisfied is he that " it would inevitably 
occasion the dissolution of our happy Union," that he declares the 
exercise of such a power, even in the District of Columbia, forbid- 
den by " objections, imperative in their nature and obligations" as 
any which the Constitution contains. None can doubt, then, that it 
is the fixed, deliberate purpose of the President to use the constitu- 
tional powers of his high office to discourage the slightest action of 
Congress on this delicate subject; and, if the occasion should arise, 
to put his veto upon it. 

If in the public service General Harrison sacrificed his personal 
and political interests, there is an obligation on the country to remu- 
nerate him. But Presidential honors would, under any circum- 
stances, be beyond his deserts. Let however, recorded and un- 
questioned facts settle his pretensions to the gratitude of his country- 
men, for his alleged care of those principles which protect the South 
in the enjoyment of her constitutional rights. 

I have stated the agency he had, and the part that he acted in 
Congress and in the Senate of Ohio. He exchanged a service in 



27 



the Federal, for one in the Stale Legislature. And from the latter, 
he went again into the former, after the Missouri excitement had 
subsided under the Compromise Act. 

On the great question of Slavery, which has agitated the southern 
mind, the sentiments of Ohio were almost unanimous. And her 
final vote in Congress, on the Missouri Bill^ was marked with 
unanimity. 

When General Harrison became a candidate for Congress, and 
•was defeated by Mr. Gazley, new questions vexed the public mind. 
The Legislature of Tennessee had nominated the Hero of New Or- 
leans for the Presidency. General Harrison warmly opposed that 
nomination, and Mr. Gazley as warmly supported it. And then, as 
now, the Presidential question absorbed all minor ones. 

That the Presidential contest defeated General Harrison, and not 
a pretended sacrifice of himself for Southern rights, is manifested by 
the fact that he retained his popularity, and speedily returned to the 
Senate of the United Stales where, by his open action and recorded 
votes, he steadily invaded all Southern rights, until he voluntarily 
quitted the Senate in 1828, for the lucrative mission to Bogota, 
which he received from President J. Q. Adams, his generous, poli- 
tical, and private friend. In 1800, the elder Adams appointed 
General Harrison Governor of Indiana. 

The coalition has been solemnly formed against Southern rights. 
And General Harrison is selected as the fittest Chief to lead on the 
embattled hosts. No candid, well-informed person can deny that it 
is the settled expectation and desire of the General to attract to his 
political support the fanatics and Abolitionists. And he practices the 
cunning diplomacy of his supporters, and relies on the dubious 
character of his fonner opinions to obtain their aid without offence 
to the South. 

Why the studied reserve that governs the General now ? — this 
unwonted, premeditated concealment of his present opinions on a 
question of such vital importance to the national repose ? Is it the" 
fear of offence to the Abolitionists who surround him, and who now 
openly oppose the Administration party ? I am constrained to be- 
lieve that it is. 



28 



The fate of his unsuccessful rival, Mr. Clay, plainly informed tlie 
General that a majority of those who oppose the Administration will 
support no man for the Presidency M'ho discountenances the de-" 
signs of the Abolitionists. 

No sooner had Mr. Clay, in the winter of 1839, dehvered in the 
Senate his speech against that fanatical clique, than this ominous 
revelation was promulgated to the world ; " the efforts of Mr. Van 
Buren to conciliate, by bowing to the spirit of Slavery, the vote of 
the South, has been met by the speech of Mr. Clay, delivered in the 
United States Senate since the presentation of the Abolition report. 
In this speech, Mr. Clay denounces the Abolitionists in severe terms ; 
brings forward, in his peculiar and forcible language, the stereotyped 
objections against the Anti-Slavery movement; lays down the mon- 
strous principle, that *' That is property which the law makes pro- 
perty;" and, upon the ground of necessity, the tyrant's plea, de- 
fends the eternal enslavement of the colored race in our land. On 
sitting down, after this effort for the perpetration of a system of out- 
rage and wrong, the most inexcusable, as well as most detestable that 
the sun has yet shone upon, Mr. Clay received the congratulations 
of the arch-nullifiei of the "most glorious institution," John C. 
Calhoun, for having given the death-blow to Abolition. If judgment 
is not turned backward, the blow will be death to his own prospects 
of winning the splendid prize at which he is aiming ; and to 
secure which, he has, in his pro-slavery effort, fixed an indellible 
stigma on his own reputation." 

The late results at Harrisburg show how solemn, persevering, and 
successful were the efforts to make this prophecy true. The pride 
and bantling of the great National Whig party — the indefatigable 
Champion of the " American System" — the celebrated Chieftain 
who had given the greatest concentrated force and direction to the 
discordant elements which compose the army of modern Whigs, is 
now unceremoniously superseded by a superannuated idol — a mere 
subaltern in every qualification to command the public admiration. 
In " The Philanthropist," an Abolition paper published in Cin- 
^linnati, on the 14th of February last, there is this significant Ad- 
^ress : 



29 



" To the Public. 

** Fellow-Citizens : Being suddenly called home to attend to 
my sick family, I have but a moment to answer a tew of the calum- 
nies which are in circulation concerning me. 

" I am accused of being friendly to Slavery. From my earliest 
youth to the present moment, I have been the ardent friend of hu- 
man liberty. At the age of eighteen, / became a member of an 
Abolition Society^ established at Richmond, the object of which- 
was to ameliorate the condition of Slavery, and procure their free- 
dom by every legal means. My venerable friend. Judge Gatch, of 
Clermont county, was also a member of this Society, and has lately 
given me a certificate that I was one. The obligations I then came 
undery 1 have faithfully performed, 

"WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON." 

■r 

The " Philanthropist" is a paper in the interest of General Har- 
rison. And shortly after the appearance of the General's address, 
the Editor penned an elaborate article upon it, summed up all that 
the General had expressed on the subject of Slavery, and denied, as 
if by authority j' that Hamson had ever labored to introduce Slavery 
into Indiana, While Governor of that Territory. And while the 
Editor relies on the Address as a favorable exposition of the Gene- 
ral's decisive opinions on the subject of Slavery, he boldly denounces 
President Van Buren for the repeated expression of opinions which 
make him wholly unworthy of any support from the Abolition party. 

In a subsequent expose, to be found in the Philanthropist of the 
3d instant, the Editor asserts that " the Administration party in the 
West has racked its ingenuity to discover new modes of manifest- 
ing its subjection to the South, and hatred of Abolition. The pre- 
sent Legislature of Ohio (now democratic) has outstript all its pre- 
decessors in this disgi-aceful policy. Every thing which envenomed 
malice could suggest, or limited capacity compass, has been done to 
convince A^bolitionists that they have no longer any thing to hope 
from the Democratic party." 

This Abolition hatred of the Democratic party equally pervades 
the North, In the fourteenth number of the " Examiner," an Abo- 



30 



lition periodical, published in New York on the 13th of last month, 
by the Anti-Slavery Society, of which Arthur Tappan is the head, 
you will find, in large prominent letters, the names of the twenty- 
eight members of the House of Representatives, who voted for the 
following resolution, lately offered to the House by Mr. William 
Cost Johnson, of Maryland, and which was adopted by a majority 
of only six. 

^^ Besolvedj That the following be added to the standing rules of 
this House : 

" No petition, memorial, or resolution, or other paper, praying 
the abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia, or any State or 
Territory, or the Slave Trade between the States or Territories of 
the United States, in which it now exists, shall be received by the 
House, or entertained in any manner whatever." 

Those were the only members from the free States who voted 
for the resolution ; and out of the 28, Mr. Proffit, of Indiana, was 
the only Tfhig. Every Northern Whig, with the exception of 
one, voted against it. The Examiner, after a shower of malignant 
invectives on the resolution, hearty congratulations on the progress 
which abolitionism has made, and the glorious prospect of emanci- 
pating the slaves, urges the people to dismiss from their service 
those 28 northern auxiliaries to Southern slave holders. 

Under the terrors of this ominous threat, notice, that a motion 
will be made to rescind this rule, has already been given in the 
House by the Hon. Francis Granger, of New York, — the same 
worthy gentleman whom the National Whig party so lately and 
cordially supported as Vice President of the United States, and 
whom they placed on the same ticket with General William Hen- 
ry Harrison. 

I would impress on the attention of my fellow citizens the un- 
answerable speech which Mr. Bynum delivered in the House of 
Representatives in January last, on the subject of abolition. He 
proves by the votes, by the records and proceedings of Congress, 
and the various State Legislatures, by evidence which he produced, 
and which could not deceive, that the countenance which abolition- 
ists and emancipationists have received from the representatives of 
the people in the Congress of the United States and elsewhere, 



31 



has been afforded by the Whigs. He proves, too, by the publish- 
ed proceedings and resohitions of the people in the North, East 
and West, that the abolitionists are ceaseless and persevering, and 
have determined to oppose the steady and consistent friends of our 
republican administration. 

Wherever in the West, the East, or the North, the democrats 
have had the direction of public affairs, they have expressed public 
and decided opinions against the right of the General Government 
to interfere in the domestic relations of master and slave. 

In the State of Ohio, nov^r truly democratic, and represented in 
the national councils with decided ability, the great Democratic 
Convention assembled in January last, from all quarters of the 
Commonwealth, passed the following resolutions: 

^^Besolved, That slavery being a domestic institution, recognised 
by the constitution of the United States, we, as citizens of a free 
State, have no right to interfere with it, and that the organizing of 
societies and associations in free States, in opposition to the insti- 
tutions of sister States, while productive of no good, may be the 
cause of much mischief, and while such associations for political 
purposes ought to be discountenanced by every lover of peace and 
concord, no sound democrat will have part or lot with them. 

'•^Resolved^ That political Abolitionism is but ancient federalism 
under a new guise, and that the political action of Anti-slavery So- 
cieties is only a device for the overthrow of Democracy. 

^'■Resolved, That should there be any members of this Conven- 
tion who do not subscribe to the principles contained in those reso- 
lutions relating to the subject of Abolition, they be hereby request- 
ed to leave their names with the publishing committee, to be pub- 
lished with the proceedings of this Convention." 

On the subject of the above resolutions, the democrats were unani- 
mous. And in their Legislature, a cordial response was given, as 
the subjoined proceedings will show. 

"OHIO LEGISLATURE. 
[Reported for the Ohio Statesmen.~] 

House of Representatives, 

Tuesday, January 11, 1840. 

"On motion of Mr. Flood, the House took up the resolutions re- 
lative to the subject of slavery. 



32 



*'Mr. Waddle called for the question to be taken on each resolu- 
tion separately. 

"The first resolution was then adopted — yeas 48, nays 2, which 
reads as follows : 

^^Resolved by the General Assembly of the State of Ohio, That 
the subject of slavery, as it exists in particular portions of the 
United States, was settled and adjusted at the formation of the Fed- 
eral Constitution. 

"The question then being on the adoption of the second resolu- 
tion, which is as follows : 

^^Resolved. That, in the opinion of this General Assembly, the 
interference of citizens of our State in the internal reo;ulations of 
another, is highly censurable and improper, and that we view the 
unlawful, unwise and unconstitutional interference of the fanatical 
Abolitionists of the North with the domestic institutions of the 
Southern States, as highly criminal, and that it is the duty, obliga- 
tory on all good citizens, to discountenance the Abolitionists in 
their mad, fanatical and revolutionary scheme." 

The Democratic Legislature of New Hampshire did, as early as 
13th January 1837, pass solemn resolutions declaring "that Con- 
gress cannot, without a violation of the public faith, abolish slave- 
ry in the District of Columbia, unless upon the request of the citi- 
zens of that District, and by the States by whom that territory v/as 
ceded to the General Government. And that the Union of the 
States can only be maintained by abstaining from all interference 
with the laws, domestic policy and peculiar institutions of every 
other State." 

We have lately seen that in the lower House of Assembly in 
New York, when the Whigs and Abolitionists had the control, they 
passed violent denunciations against the resolution of Mr. Atherton» 
which was adopted by a large majority of the House of Represen- 
tatives, and which resolution of Mr. Atherton was practically the 
same as the one offered lately by Mr. Wm. Cost Johnson, to 
which I have referred. 

That in the Senate of New York, when the Democrats had the 
control, the denunciatory resolutions of the lower House were re- 
buked and voted down in the following manner ; 



33 



'^Resolved, That llie preamble and resolutions of the Assembly- 
be and are hereby rejected." And they were rejected entirely by 
the democratic vote. 

Every where the Abolitionists interrogate even their gubernato- 
rial candidates for the popular favor; and demand their written 
opinions on the subject of slavery. 

In a late number of the "Liberator," written by Garrison, of 
Massachusetts, he says, "Edward Everett, the Governor of the 
Commonwealth, has answered unequivocally in the affirmative to 
the question, whether he is in favor of the immediate abolition of 
slavery in the District of Columbia, and the slave trade between 
the several States. Edward Everett now speaks the language of a 
patriot, a republican and a christian. We believe it is the real 
language of his soul. And in the same number of that paper, 
there is an extract from a letter written by "a member of the Mas- 
sachusetts Anti-slavery Board," in which the writer, alluding to 
his Excellency's reply, says, "Governor Everett's letter is satisfac- 
tory." 

In the Whig State of Vermont the Legislature did, on the 21st 
of January, 1839, pass first, a resolution to instruct their Senators 
and to request their Representatives, to use their utmost effiDrts to 
procure the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the District 
of Columbia, and the slave trade between the several States, and 
the territories of the Union? And 2dly, a resolution, condemning 
in the most violent manner the course which the Administration 
party pursued in the House of Representatives, upon the subject of 
abolition petitions. 

The Whigs and Abolitionists have lately united and elected as 
Lieutenant Governor of New York, Mr. Brady, a celebrated and 
notorious Abolitionist. 

And the Abolitionists of New York have lately embodied as a 
political party, and issued a "Circular to the Anti-slavery electors 
of the State of New York;" in which they embody bitter resolu- 
tions against the democratic party, assign the reasons for their de- 
termination to oppose Marcy, and support Seward, as Governor of 
the State. In their fifth resolution, they declare "that the re-elec- 
tion of Governor Marcy would go very far toward the re-election 



34 



of Martin Van BureUy whose measures and policy are hostile to 
the cause of human liberty." 

"We view the great question of Sub-Treasury, a National Bank, 
or the currency, of minor importance, compared with the great 
subject of human liberty \ and believing that the election of Mr. 
Seward, and the defeat of Governor Marcy, will best 'promote the 
s;reat cause of universal e7nancipation, we shall vote for him 
ourselves, and recommend our ALbolition friends to do the same." 

The people of Virginia, and the entire South, continually assert 
that the question of abolition is that which above all others, most 
affects their vital rights and interests — their property, their honor, 
and their lives. All other subjects are subordinate to this great per- 
vading interest. The alliance of Federalism and Abolitionism is 
now, I think, settled beyond all dispute or doubt. 

These congenial spirits have boldly united in the nomination of 
Harrison, and stand pledged to elevate him, if they can, to the Pre- 
sidency of the United States. In this determination they are one, 
identical and indivisible. They have proclaimed hostilities against 
the democratic party, and hail|With enthusiastic joy the anticipated 
triumph of their superannuated Chief. 

In his success, the Abolition augury will be sure, " that hereafter 
no slave-holder, or inhabitant of a slave State, shall ever be Presi- 
dent of the United States." 

In this conjuncture of affairs, it is but an obvious dictate of pru- 
dence and patriotism that the entire section of the country whose 
vital interests are threatened and assailed, should rally in concerted 
opposition to the union of factions so mischievous and wicked. And 
it is hardly credible that any portion of the people, from the quarter 
assailed, can longer contribute to support it. 

Talk who will about Missouri restriction in former days, the fact 
is notorious — no Abolitionist or Emancipationist supports the Presi- 
dent of the United States. Every conductor of their papers, jour- 
nals, periodicals and presses — every organ which communicates the 
fanatical spirit of the age — is against him. And when the forest 
trees stoop their tall and stubborn heads, the direction of the storm 
must be obvious to all. 

The charge against Mr. Van Buren, that he encourages extravar- 



35 



gant appropriations for internal improvements by tlie General Go- 
vernment, is so wilfully disingenuous, deceitful and false, that no- 
thing- but the most impudent and conscious mendacity could parade 
it before the public mind. 

On the 19th of December, 1825, Mr. Van Buren offered a 
resolution to the Senate of the United States, declaring " that 
Congress does not possess the power to make roads and canals 
within the respective States." And in the following May, he voted 
against the Dismal Swamp Canal Bill, because " he did not believe 
that the General Government possessed the constitutional power to 
make such canals, or to o-rant money to make them." 

In his able and explicit letter of October, 1832, to the North Ca- 
rolina Committee, at Shocco Springs, he expressed the opinion that 
the general and true interests of the country would be best consulted 
by withholding appropriations for internal improvements, until some 
constitutional regulation upon the subject should be provided. 

It is true, he once voted for a bill to, authorize tolls on the Cum- 
berland road, a public work projected under the administration of 
Mr. Jefferson. But it is believed that the constitutional powers con- 
nected with that road were never discussed nor suggested, until 
President Monroe vetoed the bill. And in the Senatorial debate on 
Foote's resolution to authorize the Vice President to call to order 
for words spoken in the Senate, Mr. Van Buren alluded to his vote 
on the Cumberland Road Bill, and declared that it was the only vote 
he had ever given in the Senate, which could be tortured into a de- 
parture from the principles he professed to entertain ; that he deeply 
regretted the vote ; that if such a question were presented to him 
again, he should vote against it; and he applauded President Mon- 
roe for putting his veto on that bill. His annual Message to the 
present Congress may be regarded as proving the sincerity of these 
views ; the free expression of which, has subjected him to the vio- 
lent censure of the Whigs, who claim for Congress the constitu- 
tional authority to appropriate the federal revenue to objects of this 
kind. 

On the 14th of February last, Mr. Barnard, of New York, one of 
the most talented and distinguished Whigs in the' House of Repre- 
sentatives, declared that " the great interest of internal improvement 



36 



by the General Government, was placed in jeopardy by the attitude 
the President had assumed towards it. Here, in my place, and on 
my responsibility as a member of this House, I charge that the Pre- 
sident of the United States has now assumed an attitude of dis- 
tinct and avoived hostility to the policy of making further appro- 
priations, at least for the present., for internal improvements, for 
roads, harbors, and rivers, even in the case of works already un- 
dertaken and only partly executed ; and I shall shortly refer to the 
proofs of the fact. I make this charge not, certainly, in the way of 
reproach, since the President has acted in the matter in the dis- 
charge of his constitutional duty as the official adviser of this House, 
and, as I am bound to suppose, according to his conviction of right, 
and duty ; but I speak of the matter of fact, as I understand it to be, 
and as I shall now show it to be — a matter beyond doubt and con- 
troversy." Mr. Barnard, having exhibited his evidence in support 
of the charge, thus gravely made against the President, continued, 
*' Certainly nobody can doubt, who looks carefully into those pa- 
pers, that it is the settled policy of the President, in which he is 
supported by his two Secretaries, that no appropriation whatever 
ought to be made, the present year at least, for works of internal 
improvement. The President insists, in the strongest terms, on 
the duty of Congress to keep the appropriations within the esti- 
mates presented, and, of course, he insists that nothing shall be 
appropriated for works of internal improvement. He thinks that 
both the Executive and the Legislature, should be held to a strict 
accountability, if any thing of the sort shall be permitted ; and he 
intimates, in case the attempt shall be made by Congress, that it 
will be mere forbearance on his part, if he do not interpose the au- 
thority of his veto to prevent it." 

And yet with all these wholesome opinions of Mr. Van Buren — 
opinions recorded in history, and backed and fortified by the recent 
declarations and testimony of eminent Whigs in the House of Re- 
presentatives — the stale and senseless accusation is continually re- 
peated, that the President countenances internal improvements in 
the most unconstitutional and hateful forms. 

The good we derive from the services of our fellow citizens is 
not always remembered with becoming gratitude and wisdom; 



37 



while we often perceive, remember, and exaggerate, the errors and 
imperfections inseparable from the frail nature of man. Hence the 
disposition of many to listen to whomsoever will assert that our mis- 
fortunes and embarrassments are not the casualties of our mortal 
and imperfect lot, nor the necessary evils of our own procuring, 
but that some grim idol of the popular choice ; some sinister distur- 
ber of the public repose ; some reckless and ferocious tyrant in the 
happiness of Presidential authority, has poisoned the sources of our 
national felicity, and dissipated our golden dreams. 

How boldly this most convenient topic of political denunciation 
has been handled against the President of the Union must be obvi- 
ous to all who read the unmeasured vituperation that is continually 
lavished on that mild, able, dignified, and upright man. Yet, to 
calculate that the Government of the United States shall be able, at 
all times, to preserve entire order in the Union ; to maintain our 
peaceful relations throughout the world ; to anticipate and to prevent 
every abuse of trust and authority among the public servants ; to 
regulate foreign commerce and internal trade ; to avert that rebound 
which is naturally calculated to crush the heedless adventurer of 
cupidity and speculation ; to limit the national expenditures to a 
sphere and magnitude which the immediate representatives of the 
people may think proper to disregard ; and to minister to the pecu- 
niary appetites of all who crave money, and urge the Government to 
supply it, is to expect from a mere human institution what theocracy 
itself might be puzzled to accomplish. 

But I cherish the cordial hope and expectation that a fair, candid, 
and dispassionate estimate of the Presidential services of Mr. Van 
Buren will result in the general conviction that the wisdom of his 
administration has fully vindicated the choice of the Nation who 
made him what he is — the First Magistrate of a great and free 
people. 

That modern Whigs should revile and depreciate the present 
Chief Magistrate of their Country, was the natural, expected conse- 
quence of the only obvious principle that holds together such an 
anomalous mixture of public men — the principle of raising them- 
selves into power and place. It is only on that potent and pervading 
principle of political tactics, that we are enabled to account lor the 



38 



alternate defamation and applause which th6 Whigs have continually 
lavished on the various characters that have appeared above the po- 
litical horizon of this Country, and on whom the public scrutiny has 
been fixed intently, to detract or praise. The truth of this imputed 
alternation from hatred to love — from obloquy to praise, a few me- 
morable examples may suffice to show. 

Just before Mr. Leigh was nominated for the Presidential office, 
the leading organ of the Whigs pronounced him to be a century be- 
hind the age. Yet but a little while after, the very same organ sup- 
ported Mr. Leigh for the Presidency of the United States ! He 
whose political opinions were publicly ridiculed for their antiquity 
and inaptitude to modern times, was, by the mighty magic of Whig- 
gery, suddenly endowed with all the fresh and wholesome lights in 
the science and principles of political economy, and fitted to grace 
the first station in the councils of the Union. 

Judge White, .of Tennessee, was also roundly and heedlessly de- 
nounced by the same party, as the degraded vassal of President 
Jackson, the vile register of executive decrees. Yet, so soon as 
Judge White aspired to the Presidency, in direct opposition to the 
general wishes of the Administration party, and ruined his fortunes 
as a public man, all the vassalage of the Judge quickly expired in 
the prodigal admiration of innumerable Whigs. He became, indeed, 
a hero then I And every conceivable effort was freely made to raise 
him to the Presidential trust. I pass over the cases of Floyd, Taze- 
well, and many more around whom such shadows ahd lights have 
capriciously played, to make way for the most memorable instance 
that the history of politics discloses to the world. You perceive 
that I am about to usher in the name of a man who gained my con- 
fidence and admiration — I mean Mr. William C. Rives. This dis- 
tinguished 'favorite of fortune was reared in an atmosphere fragrant 
with the glory of Jefferson. And social proximity to that apostle of 
liberty eiiabled Mr. Rives to feed the taper of his aspiring mind 
with the redundant and wholesome light of Monticello. The lustre 
reflected u-pon him from an orb so Iji'illiant and pure presaged his 
future course, and made him conspicuous to the advocates of free- 
dom. In his own native Virginia — a State not barren in wisdom 
and worth — no man of the age has been more freely honored with 



39 



political preferment and applause. His seat in the House of Dele- 
gates was quickly abandoned for a more distinguished one in the 
House of Representatives. A mission abroad, and Senatorial hon- 
ors at home, came thickening on him from the spontaneous gener- 
osity of his triumphant party. Stimulated by the ties of gratitude 
and the convictions of a considerate mind, he not only contributed 
to overthrow the administration of John Q. Adams, but advocated, 
with ability and zeal, the leading measures which brought down 
upon President Jackson the rancorous hatred of the Whigs. The 
memorable Expunge, intended, as was alleged by the Whigs, to fix 
upon them that burning shame they had offered to the laurels of the 
President, \vas assisted through the Senate by the parliamentary 
abilities of Mr. Rives. The Whiggish denunciation against him, 
w^hich, before, had been continual and bitter, was as the cheering 
voice of praise when compared to the ferocity of its character then. 
Language is incompetent to describe it. No violated confidence — 
no betrayal of trust — no measure of ingratitude to the cordial friends 
who reared the fortunes of Mr. Rives, could provoke from the de- 
mocratic party the remorseless fury then manifested towards him by 
the Whigs. 

Since then, the flushed and elated Whigs, backed and encouraged 
by the mighty contrivances of incorporated wealth, have reunited 
and embodied their hitherto discordant forces, and now constantly 
proclaim their ability and determination to crush the President and 
the Democratic party. To pamper this vain exultation, the Con- 
servative leaders have made their appearance, and drawn their wea- 
pons in the ranks of the opposition. They professed to have mus- 
tered troops in defence of great constitutional principles ; and for a 
season, stacked their arms upon neutral ground, and coldly eyed the 
battle field. But the leader of the Northern Conservatives, to secure 
a sway in his native land, soon went over to the enemy in bold and 
free defiance ; and now, in the national Senate, wages a fierce, un- 
natural, relentless war, upon the political party with ^vhich he so 
lately and so cordially co-operated. 

The commander of the Virginia Conservatives, more cool and 
wary, calculated with a circumspect mind the hazards of the enter- 
prise, and felt and measured the ground on which he has detcrmi- 



40 



ned to move. But he, too, has lately doffed his neutrality — left 
his former generous and confiding friends — and crossed the Rubicon 
of party strife. 

The exulting enemy applauded the act, received him v^^ith delight, 
and freely forgave his previous sins. Nay, in the overflowings of 
ecstatic joy, they have labored with the most persevering assiduity 
to return him to the national Senate, where he plunged a dagger in 
their precious fame ; and whose records, they assert, he had muti- 
lated and defiled with the most cold, selfish, calculating, and delibe- 
rate baseness. 

For this sudden, extraordinary support of Mr. Rives, the great or- 
gan of the Whig party in Viiginia had no justifiable pretext, that I 
am aware of. The editor of the Whig, and the leader of the Con- 
servatives, did not agree, even on the great financial question of the 
day. For, while Mr. Rives considered and denounced that mea- 
sure as a curse to the national prosperity, Mr. Pleasants considered 
it the wisest and safest financial measure which Congress could then 
adopt. I do not undertake to quote his language, but to state, in 
substance, the views which he entertained upon that subject, and 
which he published to the world. The opposition of Mr. Rives to 
the Sub Treasury scheme, could not, therefore, have endeared him 
to the editor of the Whig, It should, in the ordinary course of hu- 
man reasoning, have widened the breach between them. No ; the 
ground boldly and openly assumed by the editor, for the support of 
Mr. Rives was, that with his assistance, the Whigs could carry the 
elections and get command of the government. This was the doc- 
trine promulgated by the press, and echoed in the halls of the Le- 
gislature, by gentlemen of the Whig party, who claimed to repre- 
sent the virtue, the principles and the patriotism of the Common- 
wealth of Virginia. 

If gratitude be among the number of a gentleman's virtues, and the 
greatest benefactors deserve the warmest returns of gratitude, what 
benefactors can Mr. Rives compare with the early and devoted pa- 
trons who gave him whatever of power and distinction he has ac- 
quired. 

Our country^ too, whose ever grateful eyes his ripening worth so 
tenderly could see, that scarce she breathed an accent to the skies 



41 



but what was winged with benisons for him ! Yet, instead of gra- 
titude for this rare, dehcate and generous appreciation, I am sorry to 
believe, one only feeling now, pervades his heart— feelings of un- 
kindness, not to say hostility, towards the great body of his former 
political friends! the cordial and confiding friends, who placed him 
in the lead of his fellow men, cheered and sustained him in every 
strife, and aimed to raise' him to the Presidential heighth. * 

And who gets the benefit of this painful and unnatural abandon- 
ment of his former friends ? Why, politicians who have covered 
over Mr. Rives with every crime that can degrade humanity ; poli- 
ticians who but lately declared that "he had made his infamy uni- 
versal and eternal;" politicians who have recorded that " the fid- 
dling of a Nero — the cruelty of a Caligula — the cold blooded ty- 
ranny of a Tiberius, may be forgotten; the long catalogue of crime, 
which stands a memento of human depravity, may fade from the 
page of history, and vanish from the memory of man ; but his bare 
support of the Expunge, untouched by the finger of time, shall re- 
main to shame our nature, to the latest age. The men who, in the 
presence of an assembled nation, before their country and their God, 
wilfully and deliberately perjured themselves, and placed the perju- 
ry on record, need never expect to be forgiven. Charity may vain- 
ly essay to mitigate the infamy of their deed, but their names will 
never cease to be execrated, whilst virtue has a votary, or vice is to 
be deprecated. 

" We," (continues the same charitable organ of party strife) 
*' sincerely wish that it were not counter to the order of Providence, 
that all the perpetrators of that dark tragedy on our country's honor, 
might be cursed with an immortality here ; that they might live on, 
while time holds its course, to hear, in their proper persons, the un- 
measured and bitter execrations of every honest man, and on each 
returning day, be lashed naked through the world, with a whip of 
scorpions, from the rising to the setting sun. 

" It is proper to say, in good time, and emphatically, that the 
Southern Whigs cannot, and will not support an Expunger for 
any office whatever.'''^ 

It is utterly hopeless, therefore, to expect that any policy or sup- 
porter of the Administration can satisfy a discordant, inconsistent 



42 



and voracious party, who labor under a political disability to be 
pleased with any thing that the Government can do ; who employ 
in their service principles they condemn, and politicians they revile, 
and who mean to continue discontented with every statesman, with 
every man, and every measure, which may operate against the in- 
stallation of themselves into power and place. 

» A few words upon another subject, which has engaged the public 
attention, and agitated the public mind during the present session of 
Congress, and I Avill close my communication. 

When at the commencement of the present session, the five Whig 
members from the State of New Jersey presented to the House of 
Representatives the credentials of their Governor, importing that 
they w^ere duly elected, I supported the pretensions of those mem- 
bers to the seats they claimed; because, I was unwilling to believe 
that the Chief Magistrate of a Sovereign State could so far forget his 
dignity, his duty, and his place, as to grant credentials not warrant- 
ed bv the laws, and the evidence before him. 

But the Committee of Privileges and Elections have since pro- 
duced to the House a Report which satisfies me, fully, that the five 
Democratic members whom the Governor excluded, by the creden- 
tials aforesaid, had received at the last Congressional elections in 
that State a majority of the lawful votes of New Jersey ; and 
should have received the credentials which were given to their op- 
ponents. And I have now the satisfaction to inform you that this 
exciting question was settled on the 10th of this month, under the 
judgment of the House of Representatives, that the five Democratic 
members from that State were entitled to their seats. 

All the pretexts under which the Chief Magistrate of New Jer- 
sey, for political efl'ect, affixed his great seal to what I am reluctant- 
ly constrained to believe was a false record, have been fully refuted 
and condemned in the House, by a majority of thirty-one. And his 
Excellency stands convicted of, what I must be permitted to believe, 
was a bold, audacious attempt to defeat the elective franchise of his 
live State, and to paralyze the public will of the whole nation, by 
returning to the House of Representatives a fraudulent majority 
against the measures and policy of the Administration. 



43 



And it is worthy of remark, that when the House was brought to 
vote upon the proposition to admit the live New Jersey members, 
who had until then been exduded, one of the opposition asked to be 
excused for not voting. Mr. Adams refused to vote, and several 
others who followed his lead, stood mute. 

AVhat Alexander Hamilton said of the elder Adams, may be safe- 
ly asserted of his wayward son, " that he has certain fixed points of 
character, which tend naturally to the detriment of any cause of 
which he is the chief, and of any Administration of which he is the 
head ; and whose ill-humors and jealousies greatly distract the mea- 
sures of the Government." 

Mr. Van Buren, in a spirit of concession and compromise, fa- 
vors, as you are aware, a judicious tariff; such a tariff as shall re- 
duce the public revenue to the just wants of the Government, and 
which, by its justice and moderation, shall protect the interests of 
the whole community, 

I have already stated that he is against a United States Bank in 
any form : And that he is of opinion, that the subject of slavery 
is exclusively under the control of the State Governments : and 
that neither the Government, nor the people of any other State, 
than such as slavery exists in, can constitutionally disturb the rela- 
tion of master and slave. 

I deem it unnecessary to descant with a tedious prolixity on the 
general principles which directed the public course of Mr. Van 
Buren, previous to his election to the presidential office, because 
those principles have been detailed in a variety of forms ; recorded 
in the annals of the age ; and have been deliberately weighed and 
sanctioned by an impartial public. 

As litde effective will be the efTorts of the opposition to convince 
the community that the Administration party have lately trampled 
on the sovereignty of the States, by expressing their opinion 
against the profligate, unconstitutional design, fondly and stealthily 
cherished, to induce Congress to assume and pay the enormous 
debts of the several States. This design is rather magnificent than 
novel. Alexander Hamilton tried it when he stood at the head of 
the Treasury. And the atrocity of his Assumption Act has been 
rendered immortal by the graphic exposure of it which Mr. Jef- 
ferson has bequeathed to the world. ; ; ; 



44 



The present seductive design to bribe the States may be sup- 
ported by desperate politicians, who appeal rather to the avarice, 
than the virtue of their fellow men ; to the lust of power and the 
aggrandizement of the nation : but until our reading, thoughtful, 
inquisitive and virtuous people shall forget the patriotic and unan- 
swerable arguments against it which have been lately delivered in 
the National Senate, that mischievous design can never prevail. It 
* must perish, like the flame of a candle when lowered into the me- 
, phitic vapors of a well. 

Obloquy has become a striking characteristic of the cloudless 
glory of an eminent man. And the opposition party heaps it with 
unmeasured profusion on a character, fertile, as I verily believe, 
in every quality that adorns a patriotic statesmen. 

Cool and cautious, assiduous and persevering, the admirable 
temper, the indomitable courage, the virtuous fidelity and superior 
wisdom of the President have greatly contributed to conduct his 
country to her proud eminence among the nations of the earth. 

When the pretensions of Mr. Van Buren were first brought be- 
fore the people of the United States for the Presidential office, 
every political opinion that he had ever expressed, and every topic 
of objection that could possibly hinder his election to that high 
station in the country, were freely disclosed to the public mind, 
and canvassed with unscrupulous freedom and severity. This 
eminent man was reared in the principles of the democratic school ; 
and has avowed, illustrated and sustained those principles through- 
out his long political career. While but a minor in years, he gave 
to the republican administration of Mr. Jefferson, a zealous and 
indefatigable support. And when the hostile encroachment of 
Great Britain on our maritime rights, had suspended the foreign 
relations of this country, and roused the nation to a spirit of resist- 
ance, the non-intercourse act, the embargo, and every efficient 
measure calculated to uphold the honor and independence of his 
country, received Mr. Van Buren's cordial approbation and contin- 
ued encouragement. And when the national renown could endure 
no further wrongs ; when the folly and injustice of England had 
driven the blessings of honorable peace from among us, Mr. Van 
Buren supported the war with zeal, wisdom and perseverance. 



r 



-l/> 



Soon after the declaration of war, he took liis seat in the Senate of 
his native State ; and while hostile armies mustered on our soil, 
ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and in a spirit of savage bar- 
barity, violated youth, beauty and innocence, — he advocated the 
belligerent measures of the nation with an energy which no disloy- 
alty could check, no force resist, nor cowardice evade. 

Mr. B. F. Butler, the late upright and accomplished Attorney 
General of the United States, resided with Mr. Van Buren at the 
time, and has publically declared that "there was no person in the 
State of New York, of Mr. Van Buren's age, who had given a 
more efficient aid than he did to the measures of the General Gov- 
ernment, during the whole period of the restrictive system. His 
cotemporaries of all parties might be appealed to, as witnesses, 
on this point. He was an open and decided advocate of all the 
strong measures proposed against Great Britain, during the session 
of Congress in 1811 — 12, the war included. Having been born 
and reared in the same town with him ; having been from July, 
1812, until after the war, an inmate of his family, I am, says Mr. 
Butler, able to speak on this subject from personal knowledge. 

The hostility of the Federalists towards him, as a party, in the 
county in which he then resided, was as decided and violent during 
the year 1812, as it had been before, or was afterwards. Indeed, it 
has never been withdrawn nor suspended from the commencement 
of his political career, to the present day. 

In 1813, after the peace-loving Warrior of North Bend had aban- 
doned the armies of his country for the securer scenes of private 
life, Mr. Van Buren continued to rouse and animate the heroic ardor 
of his fellow-citizens ; and to impress upon their minds the hopes 
and the glories that were staked on the valor of their hearts, and the 
vigor of their arms. "The same rights," said he, "which you 
fought to obtain in the revolution, you must now fight to preserve ; 
the contest is the same now that it was then ; and the feelings 
which agitated the public mind — which, on the one hand, supported, 
and on the other hand sought to destroy the liberties of the country, 
will be seen and felt in the contest of the present day. I solicit the 
honest men of all parties, to remember that this is the last Repub- 
lic ; that all the influence of the crowned lieads in Europe, has been 



46 

'J 
exerted to propagate the doctrine that a Government like ours can 
never stand the shock of war ; to reflect that this is the first occasion 
in which this Government has been engaged in war ; and that the 
great and interesting question, whether man is capable of self-gov- 
ernment — whether our Republic is to go the way of its predeces- 
sors ? — or whether, supported by the hearts and arras of her free 
citizens, she shall deride the revilings, and defeat the machinations 
of her enemies, are now to be tried." 

An eminent public man, now high in the councils of this coun- 
try, in speaking of the services which Mr. Van Buren rendered the 
nation during the war, says : " He was the man which the occasion 
required — the ready writer, prompt debater, judicious counsellor ; 
courteous in manners, firm in purpose. He contrived the mea- 
sures, brought forward the bills and reports, delivered the speeches, 
and drew the State papers, which eventually vanquished the Fede- 
ral party, turned the doubtful scales, and gave the elections of April, 
1814, to the friends and supporters of Madison and the war — an 
event, the intelligence of which was received at Washington with 
an exultation only inferior to that which was received on the news 
of the victory at New Orleans. The new Legislature, now demo- 
cratic in both branches, was quickly convened by Governor Tomp- 
kins ; and Mr. Van Buren had the honor to bring forward, and carry 
through, amidst the applauses of patriots, and the denunciations of 
the Anti-war party, the most energetic war measure ever adopted in 
America — the Classification Bill — ^to raise an army of twelve thou- 
sand State troops, to serve for two years, and to be placed at the 
disposal of the General Government." 

It will soon become our patriotic duty to determine alt the polls, 
whether Mr. Van Buren has deserved to forfeit the continued ap- 
probation of his fellow-men — whether, in the administration of the 
General Government, he has been unmindful of the national wel- 
fare, or has departed from the great public principles on the credit 
of which he received the crowning honors of the nation. 

Could I believe that he has betrayed his sacred trust, or proved 
himself inadequate to discharge the^duties of it, in the voice of a free- 
man I would proclaim it to the world. But, as I can perceive 
amidst the arduous, delicate, and responsible duties of his high posi- 



47 



tion in the Union, the same wise, upright, and laborious zeal for the 
public weal that always characterized his previous career, the same 
deferential obedience to the popular will — the same dutiful sohcitude 
to foster and perpetuate those great principles of constitutional lib- 
erty which sprouted in the blood, and flourished in the wisdom of 
the illustrious dead, I. cannot wrong my country, and my constitu- 
ents, the renown of our ancestors, and the c^use of free government 
so much, as to fasten, by my suffrage, a badge of disgrace on the 
public character of such a man. 

In a crisis like this, to dismiss that wise and faithful Magistrate 
from the Government, would be to throw the pilot overboard, when 
the fury of the wind and waves, and the still more destructive ele- 
ments of human folly and injuGtice, are all in active combination to 
propel the vessel on a desolate shore. It would manifest ingratitude 
to the founders of our republican institutions, and the grossest igno- 
rance of our perilous condition. 

If we cannot appreciate the blessings we enjoy, nor comprehend 
the magnitude of the danger to which they are exposed, the organs 
of the heart and understanding must be barren of praise to our 
Creator, and unproductive to ourselves of that pleasure and utility 
which a dutiful recollection of the works of infinite wisdom should 
always afford to a rational mind. 

I trust in Providence that a gracious and enlightened spirit will 
pervade the land, and rebuke that political extravagance which seeks 
to fasten on tlie country those baneful principles which have no root 
in the constitution — no sanction from the wisdom of our ancestors, 
nor'from the dictates of patriotism ; and which continually threaten 
the peace, security, and freedom of the only powerful, rational Re- 
public in the world. 

Accept assurances of the very kind consideration with which 
I am, sir, with great respect, 

Your friend and obedient servant, 

G. W. HOPKINS. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




011 895 505 5 



>jiii\.nrx%'ifiv.'tffft'i 



'■'M'^& 












■v>l^ 



■ -l^ 



^ 



